Columnist and
blogger Don Surber says President Obama started his term:
living the life of Riley. Then reality set in. Now he is living the life of Jimmy Carter. How did he wind up here?
So Surber lists the "Top 10 things Obama got wrong." I don't agree with all of them, but
here's numbers 2-5, plus 8:
2. He got Obamacare wrong. Along those lines, President Obama saw how Hillarycare went and decided to do the opposite. Or likely more accurately, the president heard that Hillary lost on health care because it was written in the White House. He decided he would do it differently and have it written by Congress. This was a formula for failure because he lost control of the bill. This meant he was putting his name and reputation on the line for something he never wrote. And what was written was a mess.
3. He got the economy wrong. He overestimated its strength and went full-speed ahead with spending. Budgets for agencies were doubled as liberals wanted to have a field day regulating everything. But tax revenues tanked. That $400 billion deficit he campaigned against tripled. Guess what? The public noticed. So did S&P. He is now President Downgrade.
4. He got the stimulus wrong. The $787 billion stimulus was a grab bag of political kickbacks papered over with an unnecessary, ineffective and ill-advised tax cut. The unemployment rate would have gone to 9% if we do nothing, he said. We did something and it hit 10%. Again, people noticed.
5. He got the Tea Party wrong. This is where a sycophantic press corps really hurts a president. By blowing off the Tea Party as a pack of angry klansmen who cannot handle having a black president, President Obama lost the House of Representatives in 2010. . .
8. He got Simpson-Bowles wrong. Blowing off the entire package of recommendations to rein in spending and balance the budget took away any protection from the charge that he has no plan to balance the budget other than to raise taxes. He did not have to adopt the whole thing, just enough to announce that he has a serious plan to balance the budget beginning in 2017 -- when a second term of Obama would end.
Read
the whole thing.
5 comments:
>>> Now he is living the life of Jimmy Carter. How did he wind up here?
It was utterly and completely inevitable from the day he received the nomination.
I predicted it then and I stand by it now, that he would make this generation appreciate the mound of quivering incompetence that was Jimmy Carter.
Just as Carter was a protest vote against "the system candidates", so, too, was The Great Big 0 a protest against the same.
Thing is, the system is designed to pick out those who would at least do the job moderately competently, if not well.
So when you do an end-run around the system, you do an end-run around competency tests, and what you wind up with has far more likelihood of being totally incompetent at what is an anything but simple task than the alternative.
@ Carl: I'm commiserating today---
I heard some little kids screaming at Tryst this morning; the sound actually felt like an electric pulse going through my eardrums and on into my middle ear. Closing my eyes made it worse.Thank god that family left.
OBH: And yet, we can't explain -- or even mention! -- that extending the payroll tax holiday further imperils Social Security. At present, the President appears competent by comparison.
Kit: I almost never go to Tryst. It's way too loud (especially on a rainy day) and populated by way too many 20-somethings. I return to the neurosurgeon on Thursday.
re; #5 today: Having relatives who supported the TP-ers, I kinda saw that one coming. It strikes me that the press, loudly ever present in most Americans lives, is often so noisy that it is difficult to hear what is REALLY being said...by either party. Personally, I'm not sure the greater number of Americans even know how to listen any more...
I'd actually never been to Tryst before today; I was meeting a client & he chose, but I after what happened I sure won't be going there again---it was way too painful! It also smells funny ( or was that the 20 somethings & the hipsters?).
Keep us posted on tomorrow's results from the neurosurgeon.
Reading today's posting in particular has gotten me pondering a question vis a vis the upcoming presidential nominations/elections . I'm going to take my time framing this question so I don't get banned from the blog.I'll try to post in the next day or two.
Kit: I've never banned any commenter from NOfP. The only thing I will delete is unnecessary and excessive profanity.
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